America's First Daughter: A Novel (12 page)

But I’d teach her to be
devoted,
for that seemed to me a much more important virtue. Nuns were devoted. And if I was to be a devoted friend to Mr. Short, I knew that I must overlook the blots on his character as he overlooked mine.

So I determined to think no more about his pretty duchess.

Nuns wouldn’t think about his duchess.

I took the posies and inhaled their sweet scent before drawing Mr. Short into conversation. He obliged me, explaining how antislavery sentiment grew hand in hand with constitutionalism in Paris. These talks, in which he showed respect for my opinions, made me think about new things and challenge what I’d been told. Challenge, even, my papa.

And the next day I wrote to my father:

It grieves my heart when I think that our fellow creatures should be treated so terribly as they are by many of our country men. Good god have we not enough slaves? I wish with all my soul that the poor negroes were all freed.

In answer to this sentiment, Papa was also entirely silent.

London, 26 June 1787

To Thomas Jefferson from Abigail Adams

I congratulate you upon the safe arrival of your little daughter. She’s in fine health and a lovely little girl, but at present everything is strange to her. I told her that I didn’t see her sister cry once when she came to Europe. Polly replied that her sister was older and ought to do better, and had her papa with her besides. I showed her your portrait, but she didn’t know it. If you could bring Miss Jefferson with you, it would reconcile her little sister to the rest of the journey. The old nurse you expected to have attended her was sick and unable to come. Instead, she has a girl about 15 or 16 with her, one Sally Hemings.

I
WAS READY TO FETCH
P
OLLY AT ONCE
. But my father bewildered me by sending a French servant to escort Polly from London instead. And I was outraged when Mr. Short let slip the reason why.

Papa had urged Mrs. Cosway to return to Paris. The shameless woman had agreed, and because she was on her way, Papa didn’t want to chance the trip to fetch Polly for fear he’d miss his paramour!

Maria. Maria. Maria.

That night, when Papa kissed me good night, I bit down on the impudence that tempted my tongue. But Mrs. Adams showed none of my reserve in her next letter, in which she tartly informed us:

Polly told me this morning that since she had left all her friends in Virginia to come over the ocean to see you, you might have taken the pains to come here for her yourself. I haven’t the heart to force her into a carriage against her will and send her from me in a frenzy, as I know will be the case, unless I can reconcile her to going.

I was glad Abigail Adams’s letter shamed Papa.

I took greater solace that Mrs. Adams would reconcile Polly to join us and that I’d soon have my sister with me once more. After all, I knew from experience that people found it extraordinarily difficult to hold out against Mrs. Adams!

Weeks passed before the welcome sound of the hired coach turned from the rue de Berri and into the courtyard of the Hotel de Langeac. Hearing it, I rushed from the salon out to the front steps. As I held my breath, two girls stepped down from the carriage, their eyes wide with wonder and uncertainty.

Oh, dear Polly!

How changed she was. Still petite, with the blue eyes I remembered so well, but now a grown girl that I might’ve passed on the street without knowing. And yet, when I tried, I could see my mother in miniature.

“Dearest Polly, I am overjoyed to see you,” I said, hurrying down the steps.

My little sister turned shy at the sight of me, sucking her lips in as she examined my face. I smiled brightly, holding my arms out to her, but they drooped when I realized that, in fact, she had totally forgotten me.

The pain was an arrow to the heart—as sharp as any wound I’ve suffered.

Reluctantly, Polly accepted my embrace but then squirmed away, her gaze swinging over the house’s facade. “Everything here is so grand. . . .”

I grasped her hand. “I know. Paris is a wonder. You’ll love it here. Come. Papa’s eager to see you.”

As I guided her to the steps, I glanced over my shoulder at the slave girl. I hadn’t seen Sally in many years and she’d changed, too. If I’d ever doubted that Sally was my mother’s half-sister, I was convinced the moment she said hello. She had my mother’s voice. The soft lilt of her greeting was so familiar. And, in truth, her appearance was strikingly similar to my sister’s. Sally was a mulatto of fair complexion, but not so perfectly fair that the French wouldn’t suspect she was a slave. And I worried what our French friends would think. I remembered the words spoken against my father’s reputation as our
slaveholding spokesman for freedom
. But perhaps Sally’s resemblance to Polly would be to our advantage, for it was perfectly common here for lesser relations to take on positions as servants to their wealthier kin.

Like all our Hemings servants, Sally had been raised at the hearth of our family; she’d make a very fit companion in Paris, where she might learn a good trade, just as her brother had been doing with his cooking. When we entered the entrance hall, Jimmy Hemings stood waiting, dressed in his chef’s toque and work uniform. He bowed and offered a warm welcome to my sister. And his.

While the Hemings siblings celebrated their own reunion, I led Polly into my father’s study, where he leaped to his feet at the sight of us. My little sister stumbled back, still clinging to my hand as my father went down on one knee. “Don’t be frightened, child.” And when she smiled a little, he asked, “You know me, Polly, don’t you?”

She shrugged apologetically. “I think, upon seeing you, I recollect something of you, sir.”

It was another barb that dug its way into me. I had dreamed of restoring the happy little family that had laughed and sung in a wilderness cabin while hiding from the British, yet my sister didn’t even know us.

By evening, Polly and I started to overcome the deep sense of separation, and I hoped she’d spend the night in my bed, but she wanted to sleep with Sally.

“We had to trick Miss Polly onto the ship,” the slave girl explained. “Mrs. Eppes lured her onto the boat for an outing with all their children, then we played with Miss Polly till she was so tuckered out she fell asleep in my arms. When she was asleep, the Eppes family tiptoed off the ship and we set sail. Poor child woke up at sea with no way home but to swim.”

Poor Polly
. The sudden surge of sympathy redoubled my determination to do my duty by her. And I instructed myself to take no offense at the closeness she seemed to share with Sally.

By week’s end, we enrolled Polly in school with me where we finally bonded over our studies. I tutored her in French, not wanting her to experience the teasing I had. I enjoyed teaching her and basked when she complimented me as being a patient and encouraging instructor.

Polly was intelligent—if occasionally too strong-willed—and quick to make friends; she adjusted far more easily than I ever did. She had an independence I admired, even if it caused Papa to fret. Indeed, she took him to task, boldly professing her resentment that he did not go to England to fetch her.

She couldn’t know it was because of Mrs. Cosway. I never told Polly how that woman clouded his judgment. No, I held that secret for him with all the others.

S
HE DIDN’T LOVE HIM
. By God, nor
ought
she to have loved him. Why couldn’t he see it? Mrs. Cosway returned to Paris at the end of summer without her husband, and I was no longer too naive to understand her liaison with my father was of a passionately carnal nature. Papa rented an apartment in the hermitage of Mont Calvaire on the pretext that he needed privacy from the bustle of our embassy, and it served to excuse his absences when he indulged in clandestine meetings with his mistress.

But Mrs. Cosway was even less faithful to my father than she was to her husband. When unrest fomented in the city, with the king closing all political clubs and dismissing the
parlement,
Papa was forced to attend American interests in the midst of the growing crisis, and Mrs. Cosway pouted and complained of it over dinner one night.

I had to keep my gaze trained on my cutlet of chicken for fear of her seeing the exasperation and disapproval on my face. One day, when Papa was away debating the merits of the newly proposed Constitution for the United States, I told her she might take comfort in his absence with the miniatures he’d given us, but she brooded that he hadn’t commissioned them from
her
.

She apparently had a very high opinion of her own artistic talent.

If Mrs. Cosway loved my father, she’d have been his helpmate in this difficult time. If she’d loved him, she’d have been a balm to soothe his agitation. Instead, after only a few weeks, whenever Papa called upon her, she managed not to be at home. Then she called upon Papa at our embassy only when she was sure he’d be out. Because of his bad wrist, he couldn’t play the violin for her anymore. And they stopped going to the follies or to the royal gardens or to the opera. She preferred to hold court at the reputedly beautiful Polish princess’s salon, while Papa was swamped by a storm of political chaos.

I shielded my little sister from all of it, and the convent was our refuge. And I was comforted by the routine of the place, secretly slipping in to attend mass, for I felt the wont of God. Alas, on Sundays we were often at the Hotel de Langeac, where I worried for the lack of moral examples for Polly, especially when Mrs. Cosway was our guest.

One quiet afternoon, I asked my sister, “Would you like to learn from Jimmy how to make a pudding?”

Cheekily, Polly replied, “Isn’t Jimmy our chef? If he knows, why should we learn it?”

“Because Mrs. Adams once told me that every woman ought to know how to make a pudding.” The mention of Abigail Adams was the surest way of convincing my little sister, and so Polly trailed behind me into the kitchen, where we found Sally near tears because Jimmy would only speak to her in French.

Pleading amber eyes turned toward me. “Miss Patsy, I’m supposed to take a tray up to your father’s chambers, but Jimmy won’t tell me in a language I know what’s to be on the tray.”

“Jimmy, don’t be churlish,” I said, feeling sympathy for Sally.

But Jimmy insisted, “Sally must learn to speak the language if she’s to live in Paris. Perhaps she’ll learn it when she’s sent away.”

This forced Sally
all
the way to tears.

“Hush, don’t cry,” I said, a hand on her shoulder, shooting a sharp look of rebuke at Jimmy. “Your brother has gotten very much above his station since coming to France. Why, he’s become so sullen and secretive Papa jests that he’s forgotten how to speak English but doesn’t know how to speak French, either. You aren’t being sent away, Sally.”

Sally stifled her sob in a napkin. “I
am
. I’m being sent to take the pox.” This was a surprise to me, though it shouldn’t have been. It made sense; my father believed cities like Paris engendered disease. I only wished he’d informed me of his intentions, because it sent Sally into a rare panic. Glaring at her brother, she said, “And I might die of it, so you might never see me again. Then you’ll be sorry!”

She meant this to induce Jimmy’s guilt for teasing her, but Polly’s beautiful blue eyes filled with terrified tears. “Do you mean you’re going to die? Like my baby sister Lucy?”

“Of course not,” I said, trying to comfort both Polly and the servant girl who shared my little sister’s bed at night. “Polly, we took the treatment years ago. So did Jimmy. What’s more, it didn’t hurt very much.” That was at least mostly true. “Why, Polly, you can scarcely remember it, can you?”

Polly shook her head, clinging to Sally’s skirts.

“There,” I announced. “Do you see? If it was so dreadful, don’t you think you’d remember it?” Polly agreed, comforted. Sally seemed to be, too, and Jimmy hugged her before sending her up to my father’s rooms with coffee and a pastry.

But that night, Sally crept from my sister’s bed to perch at the end of mine. “Miss Patsy,” she whispered. “Your father told me I’m likely to get very sick.”

“Yes.” I remembered what my father said when I took the treatment. “We must take upon ourselves a smaller evil to defend against the greater evil. We must take upon ourselves a smaller pain in order to survive.
”

Sally nodded, gravely. “But if I pass, I want Polly to have the little bell your mama left me.”

I remembered it well. “You still have it?”

“In my bundle,” she said of her small satchel of belongings. Moved, I stroked her back between her trembling shoulder blades. “You’re not going to die, Sally. And I’ll care for you. I’ve already had the pox, so I can stay with you until you’re better.” I imagined myself wiping sweat from her brow, brushing her long black hair, and tending to her as gently as Papa once had tended to me.

Alas, that was never a possibility. It wasn’t legal to give the treatment within the city limits, so Sally was sent away to a physician’s care, where she remained quarantined for the next forty days. Which meant two things. First, that we spent forty days in fright for Sally, not knowing if we’d see her alive again. And second, that Polly finally cleaved to me.

Without Sally between us, Polly climbed into my bed. She let me take her shopping for clothes. She let me style her hair. Together we played a hiding and seeking game in Papa’s greenhouse and plucked dried and overripened Indian corn from Papa’s garden to make a display for the table. In short, now that I was fifteen, I took upon myself Polly’s mothering and cared for her as I promised my own mother I would.

Unfortunately, this only seemed to free Papa to pursue his most dangerous impulses. In spite—or perhaps because—of the way Mrs. Cosway made herself unavailable, Papa couldn’t seem to shake her enchantment. When the weather turned cold during Advent, he planned a dinner in Mrs. Cosway’s honor. Though he usually preferred small gatherings of friends, for
her,
he invited a large crowd of strangers including exiled Polish and Italian royalty. I hoped at least the crowd would avoid the intimacy of a less grand affair.